I will believe and you will wax and wane
like the tide of the day.
Like a smile first given out of sincerity
then held for social means
until something funny dances along again
and sings you back to the honest earth.

There will be magazine articles held upon jeweled tridents
as the past becomes a scene
and you become the eyes behind the car window,
hair done by your mother while you bit your tongue and don't we all just want to be grown up by now?

I fear your heart is vast as the Sahara
and beats on rhythm
with my broken refridgerator's compressor
who's clacking keeps me up all night.

This ice on my salad will not do.

As early as the birds announce
today's territory,
I'll be resting my hands
on my grandfather's coffee cup,
wondering whether sixty years
serving the war
or sixty years
of the marriage views of the 1950's
let him die alone.

The thing I'll always remember about Chris
is that his hair blended into a wheat field
and he always believed himself
when he told you everything was going to be okay.

I'm really sorry you were born on a sinking ship,
I am,
but you're never going to learn to swim
if you don't stop talking about it.

And I promise that
the day your house burns to the ground
the sky will still be brilliant.

So don't forget to take your shoes off from time to time,
because,
try as we may,
there's still a world out there.

The words get mixed up in my head sometimes
and this is the best I can do,


But one empty drano cap
before I made the mistake
of wondering what I could've done
to save you,
the last thing
my grandfather ever told me
was that the angels were building him a ladder
the size of the Sears tower

and they expected him to climb every step.



A true story.